Hollywood's latest star: Silicon Valley

She considers social media technology a specific challenge to the ground the entertainment industry had owned. “It’s a kind of new Hollywood in the sense that it allows people to make themselves famous, to be seen from afar,” she said. “It’s almost a meta story about Hollywood itself.”

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And whether either likes it, the two are increasingly linked.

When Jobs first left Apple, he invested in a little company called Pixar, which used computers to make animated movies. The startup, which Disney later bought, now ranks among the top-grossing studios in the world.

Disney last year also bought San Francisco-based Lucasfilm. Several other studios are opening operations in the region.

“Hollywood and Silicon Valley have more in common than most people realize or are willing to acknowledge,” Chris Dodd, a former senator and current Motion Picture Association of America chairman, said last month at a content protection summit.

“Not only does Hollywood work closely with Silicon Valley to create and promote films, Hollywood film and television creators are tech companies. They celebrate innovation through the world’s most cutting-edge content, and they embrace technology as imperative to the success of the creators in their community.”

It has changed how Hollywood tells stories and how we watch them. Consumers use Macs to run their televisions and purchase Netflix videos. Idealistic directors produce gems with several thousand dollars and a few friends.

Both industries might continue to play by different rules. But they grapple with similar themes of personal liberties, Internet rights and privacy protections.

Technology “used to be a geeky backwater, and now, it’s part of life, and everyone uses the products,” said Dan Lyons, editor of tech blog ReadWrite.

Perhaps Jobs sensed that interdependence when he brought actor Noah Wyle onstage at a MacWorld exposition in 1999. Wyle played Jobs in “Pirates of Silicon Valley” that year and introduced the famous inventor by mimicking him.